n what some might call the margins, the coronavirus pandemic is not just an invisible source of health and economic destruction. It is the brutal compounding of an already bulging list of difficulties and challenges, fuelled by longstanding structural problems: low Centrelink payments, insecure housing and inadequate support for people with disabilities or mental ill-health. With the curve flattening, many are looking ahead to a future when the pubs will reopen and the football will be back on the television. But others – like the six people the Guardian has spoken to below – are taking things one day at a time. And bracing for what comes next. Mahlie Jewell, 37, Sydney I’m a Wiradjuri woman living on Eora. I’ve worked in non-for-profit community services since I was in my early 20s. I’m a qualified counsellor and I’m in my second year of my master’s in art therapy. Forty-three days ago I made the decision, long before many others, to go into total self-isolation. The last places I went were the chemist and the grocery store. Since then, I haven’t left my building. Once a day I take my dog around the back of our building to run around, but mostly she goes out by herself. I live in social housing alone with my pug and two cats and have no biological family, so my friends are my family. I have managed severe mental health issues since a young age. I also live with chronic health issues – high blood pressure, asthma and other respiratory issues, and under-functioning thyroid and kidneys. In the beginning, friends came around and sat outside my door to chat – they have been my lifeline. They got me groceries, picked up my medications and my mail. They were my only connection to the outside world. When everyone started to enter lockdown, I asked them to stop coming. Just before the Covid-19 outbreak I was supposed to begin investigation into autoimmune disease, but that has been paused. I had to wait three or so weeks before my psychologist could get funding access to telehealth so I was left alone in that space, but I did OK. I know that if we got to the stage that they had to make terrible choices about who lives and dies, I wouldn’t make the cut. It’s likely I’ll have to remain in social isolation after many others have been back out into the world. But honestly, I cannot complain, as I do have savings and also am still getting some work. Carolyn Davis, 38, Melbourne I have neuromyelitis optica (similar to multiple sclerosis) and I’ve been on the disability support pension since 2018 after a two-year fight to get it. I live in complete fear now because Covid would be a death sentence for me. The financial stress on top of that is just awful. Medical bills pile up, of course. If it wasn’t for friends and family I would have been screwed. I have to see private specialists when the wait for public is too long. I just spent my entire stimulus payment ($1,500) on a ketamine treatment at a private hospital for chronic pain because the public hospital I get it done at cancelled all elective admissions. I’m very lucky to have bought a shitty apartment while I was still working that a small inheritance paid off. If I was renting I’d be utterly fucked, so I know I’m doing better than a lot of people, so I try to be grateful for that. I well understand the economic reasoning for the stimulus and as a socialist I agree with it, but it’s unconscionable to be leaving disabled people behind once again. I think about the ones trapped in abusive relationships (which we are much more at risk of) being even more stuck now because of financial issues. I see the attempts at manufactured consent to “open the economy”, ending the lockdown because it’s only “old” people at risk right? People like me just don’t exist. Never seen, never heard. Noelene Garlet, 59, Perth I’ve been staying in crisis accommodation at the Hougoumont Hotel in Fremantle for about a month. When the Covid-19 lockdowns began, I was terrified. It frightened me because I’ve got respiratory problems, emphysema. I didn’t want to die. I was thinking, “I’m not going to die on the streets here”. I’m more frightened of the disease than living on the streets. At least on the streets, we’re all family, we’ve got that bond between all of us. The people at the hotel have been great. I did have friends here, but they have been moved on to another place. I wanted to be with them but the government won’t let me, they are not taking any more people. When I haven’t been on the street during the crisis, I’ve been going from motel to motel. It just reminds me of being a kid, moving from foster home to foster home. On the streets, I don’t like how they were treating us homeless mob, like we’ve all got the disease. It’s like we’re back on the mission. They’ve got us lined up for a feed. We’ve got to stay so many metres apart from one another. It’s just confusing. I just need a house now. It’s been seven or eight years since I’ve had one. The government has not helped me whatsoever. What’s going to happen to me next is the big question mark. I don’t know. Jayden Oxton-White, 24, Brisbane I have a visual impairment, optic nerve hyperplasia. It means I have no vision in the left eye and partial in the right. I also have epilepsy. It took me 18 months to get on the disability support pension. Now I do the advocacy for the Anti-Poverty Network. A lot of it is supporting people in meetings with job providers. We can’t really do that at the moment. So I’ve been trying to help out by messaging people who have questions about Centrelink. The lines at Centrelink challenge the narrative of the “dole bludger”, right? You’ve got all these people who have just been laid off due to the crisis. A lot of them will never work again. Now for some people they have really sped up the process of how long Centrelink claims take. A lot of people are having an easier time. I’m happy about that. But this is the thing I really want to emphasise: we need to make sure that this is permanent. The big concern is that when this crisis sort of goes away, they’re going to be like, “All right, we can start rolling back over these advancements we’ve made”. Jodie, 32, Tasmania I’m a stay-at-home mum of four kids, twin girls, who are eight, a four-year-old girl and three-year-old son. I was working from home as a hairdresser, offering that service so I can have my son home with me as he has sensory issues: ADHD, slight autism and global development delay, also separation anxiety. Now I am home schooling three children with a donated laptop. My three girls have to share one laptop as I don’t have the money to get them another. We are going on week eight now of home schooling. We are scraping by fortnight to fortnight. With the children being home 24/7, they are bored. So they eat. I’m upset that I fought so hard to get on carer’s payments for my son for months. Now we are at a loss. We get $750 supplements but we miss out on the $550 a fortnight for six months. Yes, I could apply for jobseeker but then I lose my carer’s pension and that’s not an option for me. I think it’s so wrong for people that are carers to get punished despite everything we do. Scarlett Franks, 26, Sydney I am a disability pensioner, a student and work casually as a research assistant. I also belong to a community of young women with complex trauma histories who are trying to survive on the disability support pension while working towards their recovery and their education. I receive the disability support pension for my dissociative disorder and complex PTSD. My treatment is particularly expensive, largely absent in the public system. Even working when I can, the pension barely covers the hundreds of dollars I spend every month on therapy, medication and specialist medical care to manage the legacies of my childhood abuse. I go back and forth between a sense of hurt and abandonment about our exclusion from the coronavirus supplement, to a sense of dread about the scarcity I see on my horizon. I feel angry disability pensioners as well as caregivers have been overlooked and excluded. In the Covid-19 crisis, I can no longer ration my pain meds as the ambient anxiety settles in my nervous system. Instead of catching a bus, I now have to drive 30km to and from medical appointments and therapy three times a week. Some allied healthcare clinics where I receive treatment on a sliding scale have had to close – now I have to pay full price elsewhere. These additional expenses may seem small, but as a disability pensioner there is absolutely zero slack in my budget. The isolation and collective anxiety during Covid-19 has been difficult for me as a complex trauma survivor. Trauma has made my nervous system especially sensitive to cues of threat and especially reactive to uncertainty. As told to Luke Henriques-Gomes. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity. Blue Knot Foundation – Call 1300 657 380 or visit www.blueknot.org.au helpline@blueknot.org.au Helpline hours: Monday-Sunday, 9am-5pm AEST/AEDT Bravehearts Inc - 1800 272 831 Counselling and support for survivors, child protection advocacy 1800 Respect - Call 1800 737 732 or visit www.1800respect.org.au. 24-hour telephone and online crisis support, information and immediate referral to specialist counselling for anyone in Australia who has experienced or been affected by sexual assault, or domestic or family violence. Lifeline - Call 13 11 14 or visit www.lifeline.org.au. 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention.